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midwifereading's review against another edition
4.0
Dain and I both give this a high rating. This book actually takes questions of doubt seriously, attempting to answer them thoughtfully, thoroughly, and truthfully. It's not a feel-good book. It is a humble look at faith in its most stripped down form. Well done.
jfraser82's review
3.0
Although there was some great thoughts, this is not a book I would recommend to someone going through a major faith crisis. I found it just added to the crisis and I want to step away from God at times. I'm sure God is so engrained in who I am, that I can't do that completely - but for people who's faith is new and not firm...this may turn them away completely.
ansmbc's review
5.0
This book is for every Christian who has struggled with their faith walk. It provides a new way of looking at the Book of Job and God. This book challenges the westernized view of Christianity and presents a new prospective.
beckykeister's review
4.0
A really thoughtful book. It doesn't have all the answers; it just approaches these big, hard questions with a fresh perspective (at least for me).
brendaclay's review
4.0
It took me FOREVER to finish this book due to the intensity of the topic. Philip Yancey is great at creating a safe place to wrestle with hard questions about God's goodness and fairness, while also providing different and helpful perspectives. I'll probably revisit this one.
mschlat's review
4.0
Yancey takes on three basic questions in this book: Is God unfair? Is God silent? Is God hidden? His aim is to explore the sense of disappointment experienced by people of faith (primarily Christian) when they believe the answers to one or more of the above questions is yes.
The first part of the book is a retelling of the Bible in terms of God's perspective, and to be truthful, I found it somewhat facile. Yancey focuses on the person of God, drawing on metaphors such as parent and lover to explain God's actions, including some of the actions that cause people to think God is distant. It's an interesting approach, but I found it a narrow lens through which to view the scriptures.
However, that discussion makes a good preamble for the second half of the book, where Yancey focuses on the believer's experience of disappointment, and many of the themes in the first half bear fruit. By emphasizing the story of Job and the crucifixion of Jesus, Yancey connects the sense of loss experienced by humans with the same loss experienced by God. The result is a focus on compassion and condescension (in the sense of descending with). You can think of the book as a less mystical version of Saint John of the Cross's Dark Night of the Soul with a heavy dose of influence from twentieth century English Christianity (C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, Chesterton, ...).
The first part of the book is a retelling of the Bible in terms of God's perspective, and to be truthful, I found it somewhat facile. Yancey focuses on the person of God, drawing on metaphors such as parent and lover to explain God's actions, including some of the actions that cause people to think God is distant. It's an interesting approach, but I found it a narrow lens through which to view the scriptures.
However, that discussion makes a good preamble for the second half of the book, where Yancey focuses on the believer's experience of disappointment, and many of the themes in the first half bear fruit. By emphasizing the story of Job and the crucifixion of Jesus, Yancey connects the sense of loss experienced by humans with the same loss experienced by God. The result is a focus on compassion and condescension (in the sense of descending with). You can think of the book as a less mystical version of Saint John of the Cross's Dark Night of the Soul with a heavy dose of influence from twentieth century English Christianity (C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, Chesterton, ...).
cosmicbookworm's review
5.0
In preparation for writing this book Mr Yancey retreated and read the whole Bible at once. Doing it this way he saw things that he hadn’t seen before.